ecosophia | Open (More Or Less) Post On Covid 16

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Open (More Or Less) Post On Covid 16

The semi-open posts I've hosted here on the Covid-19 narrative, the inadequately tested experimental drugs for it, and the whole cascading mess surrounding them have continued to field a very high number of comments, so I'm opening yet another space for discussion. The rules are the same as before:

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry et al. are causing injury and death. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here.

3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue.

4. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules.

With that said, as the mass media insists that it's perfectly normal for pro athletes to drop dead of heart attacks at sixty times the usual rate, and search engines turn up a steadily increasing series of hits for the search string "died suddenly," the floor is open for discussion.

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"Jay Bhattacharya, Senior Scholar of Brownstone Institute, is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute."

He is writing now for the Brownstone Institute-- excellent articles, well worth a look.

https://brownstone.org/author/jayb/

Misinformation and the Ministry of Truth: Testimony to U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis
BY JAYANTA BHATTACHARYA NOVEMBER 18, 2021 POLICY, PUBLIC HEALTH 5 MINUTE READ

"The ultimate ironic effect of the fact-checking enterprise – the Ministry of Truth — has been the promotion of misinformation. By boosting the demand for lockdown and COVID-restrictions, these errors have proven disastrous."
CONTINUE READING AT
https://brownstone.org/articles/misinformation-and-the-ministry-of-truth-testimony-to-u-s-house-of-representatives-select-subcommittee-on-the-coronavirus-crisis/

The Dangerous Fantasy of Zero Covid
BY JAYANTA BHATTACHARYA, DONALD BOUDREAUX SEPTEMBER 5, 2021 POLICY, PUBLIC HEALTH

(Dr Bhattacharya is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University; Donald Boudreaux is Professor of Economics at George Mason University. This article is reprinted on the Brownstone Institute website after it appeared in the WALL STREET JOURNAL.)

"Much of the pathology underlying Covid policy arises from the fantasy that it is possible to eradicate the virus. Capitalizing on pandemic panic, governments and compliant media have used the lure of zero-Covid to induce obedience to harsh and arbitrary lockdown policies and associated violations of civil liberties."
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"Automobile fatalities could be eradicated by outlawing motor vehicles. Drowning could be eradicated by outlawing swimming and bathing. Electrocution could be eradicated by outlawing electricity. We live with these risks not because we’re indifferent to suffering but because we understand that the costs of zero-drowning or zero-electrocution would be far too great. The same is true of zero-Covid."

CONTINUE READING AT
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-dangerous-fantasy-of-zero-covid/

Does anyone have any theories on why the UK (well, England but it’s 90% of the population) is relatively normal-ish and sane about current COVID measures?

No masks, no vaccine passports (by law that is - individual organisations can require anything on private property), no question of vaccine mandates (except for care home workers, and possibly for health care workers next year).

Day to day life feels fairly normal except for people who choose to wear masks. The government support for businesses has ended. The primary remaining restrictions relate to international travel and testing requirements (and quarantine for unvaccinated travelers), but there have been leaks by the government that they are planning to end even those over the next few months and possibly even let COVID emergency legal powers under the Coronavirus Act expire in the spring (I’ll believe that when I see it).

Indeed, in recent days government ministers have even been bragging that the UK will be the first country to successfully deal with COVID as an endemic disease and letting the economy come back to life (of course with vaccines/boosters every year- it’s not perfect to say the least but it’s far saner than the rest of Europe/Canada/Australia/the blue parts of the US). They still say they cannot rule out lockdowns, and they may yet impose “Plan B” (compulsory masking and vaccine passports, although the passports will include far fewer venues than most other countries) but the mood music in the government is all about ending this thing.

Of course their biggest political asset is the success of the vaccine program. There is much less vaccine hesitancy in the UK compared to Germany etc which means something like 88% of over 12s have been vaccinated (compared to like 2/3s in Germany/Austria) and the booster program is moving fast.

But it’s not just that - those benefits apply to Scotland/Northern Ireland/Wales too but the devolved administrations there have gone in for more restrictions (short of a full lockdown) very similar to the rest of Europe - masks, vaccine passports etc. But not England.

Why?

I speculate that the Prime Minister - who is very far from perfect both personally and professionally - has always been uncomfortable with restrictions of any kind and while he’s repeatedly been pressured into three lockdowns and various other things, the measures he’s instituted have always been lighter than they could have been compared to other European countries - even our lockdowns had much more lenient rules. Whereas if Labour had been in power, we’d have basically had the same rules as France. It looks like he feels he has enough political capital to do this, plus the Chancellor has always been a bit of a sceptic on restrictions due to their cost, and once whatever political machinations happened to get the pro-restrictions Health Secretary out and replace him with a more business minded one, the internal governmental power bloc pushing for restrictions fell apart.

Also the Tories have a significant chunk of backbenchers - enough to defeat the government in Parliament if Labour votes against the Government (although Labour tend to support restrictions) who have been very sensible lockdown sceptics since 2020 and voted against many of the restrictions and they really help - along with the threat of a leadership challenge to the Prime Minister - to keep ministers honest, in much the same way that many of the same backbenchers (then in the ERG, now in the CRG) kept the government honest in Brexit negotiations and didn’t allow them to do “Brexit in Name Only”…

Yes - an acquaintance of mine was in the Novavax trial and ended up having to get two Pfizer shots for her job. So potentially three shots from two different types of technology. Talk about being a guinea pig!

Dear John,
I hope I can improve your bleak mood just a bit. This morning the interminable TV in our house spotlighted the recent statement by the German Minister that the unvaccinated would all die this winter as something really extreme. There is still a bit of sanity left in Japan at least, despite it being a corner of what The Saker has called "Zone A"--in essence countries under the globalist influence. A fellow EMF activist in Australia has proposed approaching Vladimir Putin, who he says has allowed the airing of 16 programs opposed to 5G, and bringing out some of the underhanded methods being used in this power grab for public examination.

I agree for the need for nuanced debate, but bear in mind that the logical starting position should not be neutral, it should be negative, or 'guilty until proven innocent' according to the precautionary principle, especially since the debate is not a binary 'vaccine or nothing' treatment strategy, or even an mRNA or nothing vaccine strategy (people who have taken Covax for instance are finding it is not recognized in their country and have to take one of the approved ones). The other thing that strikes me from your argument is that you are a 'fence sitter' yet you have people in your social circle that have had side effects. Given that the only logical principle here is to be skeptical and negative until the full facts are known, JMG and others have proposed a method to preserve your own sanity while taking this position - not to engage in arguments with pro vaxxers.

Thank you.
I had never heard of Substack before Scott Alexander took SlateStarCodex there and renamed it AstralCodexTen. These days, Substack is one of my preferred sources of news and perspective.

I recommend starting with two quick wins: Earthing (especially with carbon mat while sleeping) and Inclined Bed Therapy. There are many more things you can do, but they are the easiest I practice.

They really should update the definition of "vaccine" again to make explicit that it must be a patented synthetic substance approved by certain interested parties that they should come out and name, because according to the current one (basically, a substance that can be injected or taken orally to boost immunity and reduce severity of a disease), I'm growing my own vaccine out in the garden, though I haven't taken any yet. But come to think of it, when I got what I assume to be COVID-19 in early 2020, I went out and bought some echinacea at the tail end of it so I could successfully kick it to the curb and not be a coughing pest aboard our flight home.
I would declare myself thus "vaccinated," but I know that's not what they really mean and it would only backfire on me.

I remember a certain Brandon's patience was wearing thin a few months ago. Then he started finding abundant patience with certain special groups, one after the other and then last I hear a week or two ago, his patience is boundless, backing off on employment mandates for everyone?

"I'm thankful for the timing of peak oil as it limits the transhumanist orwellian dystopia we'd be heading to otherwise."

In the book "The Green Man" by Kingsley Amis, there is a great dialogue between the protagonist and God. The protagonist asks about his own death and God answer is to the effect that "don't worry, by that time you will be tired of living and happy to join me".

This is how I feel in regards to Peak Oil and Civilization Collapse. 15 years ago I was so scared that I had panic attacks about them. Now I embrace them as our saviors - if not physically, at least in spirit.
I cannot image a worse future than a rich energy techno-totalitarian one where the natural world is completely dead but people still survive.

So I guess there is a silver lining to all this trauma...

Thanks for the suggestion! Sounds like a great resource.

Boccaccio

interesting that M Rona, mRNA and moron have the same consonants

Can I provide a counterpoint to your "middle of the road" rant?

Would you have said the same thing about the Nazis and those loudmouthed jews complaining about them?

I cannot believe that at this point, there are still people pushing the "fair and balanced" narrative.
Where is the middle of the road between a totalitarian group that wants to fire and starve dissidents and the rest of us? What about the fox victims - should they just shut up so you don't feel guilty?

If I am allowed to speculate - you and people like you are trying to find a way to NOT accept that you are unwilling collaborators to a monstrous crime.

The Brownstone Institute article was interesting, but this bit made me raise my eyebrows a little:

Figuring out how our expectations for normal life were so violently foiled, how our happy lives were brutally crushed, will consume serious intellectuals for many years.

Things weren't exactly hunky-dory in 2019. I feel like a great many stressors were building to a breaking point. It was just a question of what was going to knock the whole house of cards down. Turns out it was Covid.

-Cliff

Speaking of teens and athletes dropping dead, sadly, if you do the 'died suddenly' search, you'll find younger children are starting to appear in the results.

The challenge I'm seeing is, with the past two years of behavior being so in-your-face, how can any moderately intelligent person ever trust a single word out of the pharmaceutical industry's mouth ever again, even if any particular instance may be entirely benevolent?

"between foolish complacency and outright panic"

You might be correct about the political classes in the Western world but I disagree completely with your interpretation of the last 2 years.
Where was the foolish complacency? Yes, the first couple of weeks in US the MSM "downplayed" the problem but after that they switched to panic and lying to an extreme degree.
I put downplayed in quotes because it's not really true - since 'rona has about the same mortality as the flu (just look at Africa, Sweden, China, Italy, Australia etc) there really was nothing to worry about.

Please don't let them frame the narrative - try to always remember that IF they would have done NOTHING, 2020 and 2021 would have been average years in terms of mortality.
I know this because in most countries there was no excess mortality - independent of their overreaction or "downplaying" of the crisis.

JMG, at the risk of sounding paranoid and offend some posters - is it possible that your blog has attracted some attention from the troll farms?
I keep seeing posters suggesting that "extremists on both side are bad", "foolish downplaying" etc.
This looks to me like an attempt to shift the discussion here halfway on the side of the official narrative - after all that would be "fair and balanced", right?

Having dealt with brain fog for quite a while, I have these suggestions:
1) Buy some organic wine and sage (grow the latter if at all possible). Fill a jar with sage leaves, pack them tight, and add wine to cover the leaves, but leave some headspace because they will ferment. Let it sit for about a week in a cool dark place, then start taking the wine at a rate of about one tablespoon a day. I think you can also get some benefit by adding a small amount of powdered sage to recipes. They say overdoing this is not helpful. I've seen a number of people achieve notable improvement in their ability to focus and remember (which is why it is called "sage"), and I take it regularly myself. You can also add rosemary, but sage is essential. Rosemary might exacerbate asthma, according to one friend, but it has important antioxidants that help you deal with free radicals that can be generated by any number of things, including the rapidly increasing EMFs in our environment.
2) If you have a cell phone, keep it on airplane mode except when you need it to transmit, and also be sure the bluetooth and Wi-Fi are turned off as well. A friend bought a new 5G iphone and found that even with all functions turned off, it would transmit every time he touched the screen. You may need to purchase a radiofrequency radiation meter (Acousticom is good and not expensive). I recommend Nick Pineault's book "The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs" for basic information in this area if you are new to it.
3) Take a deliberate break from the Internet one or two days a week and find something creative or active to do. The news will still be here when you get back.
4) Keep a diary, noting when and where you feel spaced out, what foods you may have consumed and any other factors that may be relevant. You can work from there to make changes.
5) Remember you are not alone. Lots of people are dealing with this. Share ideas.

I hope the commentariat can help me with 2 related questions:

The start of the fox campaigns was in many cases followed by a strong increase in infections (see this article for an overview https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-vaccines-lead-to-new-infections-and-mortality-the-evidence/5746393 ). I would guess that just after foxination the immune system is busy and thus less able to fend of corona virusses. My first question is if there has been any research into this phenomenon, either statistical or are there medical studies that provide an explanation?

The second fox seems not to have caused such a rise in infection, possibly because protection from the first fox (but more adverse events are noticed and even a temporary higher mortality see for example https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/alex-berenson-covid-vaccine-swedish-study ).

I'm worried though about the boosters. As the boosters come when the protection of the fox has declined, it seems likely that the effect will be partly similar to the first fox in its effect on the infection rates.

In my country the covid wave is near its peak according to several models and if the models are right, the infection rates should go down starting late November. Unfortunately the booster campaign started this week and our 80+ citizens are being foxed for the third time. This seems to me like the absolute worst moment for the booster campaign to start: in winter, at the peak of infections and with the weakest members of our society who will soon want to see their loved ones for the holiday season. This has the potential of a catastrophe imo. My question: how likely is it that the boosters will lead to an increased infection rate and is any data or study available?

I'd very much welcome your input!

I'm curious Kimberly if you've done a reading for the unvaxxed lately. As a charter, lifetime member of that that intrepid bunch I'd love to see those results.
Gawain

Where does JMG publish his mundane astrology?

Sam, you are absolutely welcome here. Western society is extremely confrontational. Eastern societies, where I am living, avoid confrontation. Confucianism values harmony, and I have witnessed lots of very subdued debates between people with radically different views. There are a lot of stresses, but it takes a lot for society to fracture, and then you see them come back together again and politely pretend to forget the atrocities that just happened.
I have managed to maintain a polite dialog with both the right and the left in my family, who have otherwise split.
From a religious perspective, religion is non-partisan, meant to serve and comfort both sides where the disagreement is sincere.
I must confess I am a frank conspiracy theorist, but so far our gracious host has not seen fit to throw me out.

It’s interesting you mention this. I just finished The Worst Journey In The World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the men who survived Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition. Over and over he emphasizes how each man took care of the others before taking care of himself, and how nobody ever panicked. Perhaps a bit of that Brit survives even today.

On the other hand, had they not been British they might all have survived. As bemused Allied soldiers found out in both world wars, there’s the right way, the wrong way, and the British way, and sadly, the British way includes things like taking ponies to the Antarctic, rather than sled dogs, as anyone sensible would do. Scott’s expedition had some bad luck, but their worst luck seems to have been being born British.

—Princess Cutekitten

I'd like to state that I hear your concerns about the fracturing of society, and I think they are valid.

For me, the vaccine debate has been subsumed by the liberty debate. The biggest side effect to my mind of the vaccine is that it has created what appears to be a mostly, to this point, unobstructed glide path to a global-ish totalitarian outcome. That is more terrifying to me than a bickering two party society. We've been doing that for decades now, and it's certainly not healthy, but it's 'sustainable'. Perma-Lockdowns, Vaxpasses, medical othering; these are all things that lead of a far darker world even than vax induced mass casualties, should they come to pass. At least to my mind. With a casualty scenario, that is horrific, but it will pass. Once in place, totalitarian states can persist for endless decades, and crush many bodies and spirits under their gears. Also, if it's truly global as it appears to be, it is exceedingly hard to opt out and drop out. Unless you have much faith in Musk and think Mars or the Moon will be better ;)

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Open (More Or Less) Post On Covid 16

Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University

More from the Brownstone Institute "The Dangerous Fantasy of Zero Covid"

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Re: Discussion of new Australian vaccine

Well there goes Germany again

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Re: Health problems and the vaccine

Re: Discussion of new Australian vaccine

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Re: How the mud boat advocates took over the shipyard

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Re: Really funny video and upcoming Ogham reading about the vaxxed

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Re: England/UK

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